


Edge of the Blade

by Tamoline



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 17:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17513153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: Taina, daughter of Fiona, is still young, still in the process of finding herself. Not that trouble, quite probably the type she can't just fight her way out of, isn't going to find her first.





	1. The City of Silver and Flame

**Author's Note:**

> This is the diary of Taina, a character I'm playing in a game. I've posted a character diary once before, and at least a few people seemed to like it, but this is very much not going to be my usual sort of story.

The moon is high in the sky, painting the city’s roofs from the west, the silvery blue light dripping steadily to the ground. The reverse of each roof is illuminated by the ruddy glare from the furnace that the Palace of Autumn has become.

Taina stands on the edge of the roof, easel hastily nailed to the side of the building. She considers, and then adds another dab from her palette to the image in front of her.

She hears a warm chuckle from behind her. “One day that painting will hang in the Museum of the Revolution,” the woman behind her whispers into her neck. “For the moment, let me thank you in a more personal way.”

Tain briefly resists the tugging on her left side, her practised eye unable to stop concentrating on the flaws, before succumbing and letting herself be spun into a deep kiss.

“That’s some thanks,” she says after she breaks, coming up for air.

“Everyone will want to be thanking you tomorrow,” the woman says. “The architect of our freedom.”

Something twists uneasily in Taina’s stomach. Fighting… fighting she can do; fighting she’s practised. Building? Building she’s not so sure about.

So maybe it’s just as well she already has an excuse.

“I have to leave early in the morning,” she says, stepping away slightly, feeling backwards with one foot to make sure she doesn’t step off the roof. To the woman’s obvious disappointment, she attempts to explain. “There’s been a death in the family. I have to attend my uncle’s funeral.”

It isn’t enough. “And how many funerals should we be holding tomorrow? Comrades, friends even? You’re just going to leave that all behind, abandon those of us who are still alive to the mercies of Verid and the like, so you can travel to, what, your family’s estate?”

Taina fidgets uncomfortably. This isn’t the kind of conflict she’s ever excelled at. She can’t even contest the assumption that she comes from wealth, not now, not at the end, despite how much she’s denied it in the past, and she can see the woman note that fact and her expression darkens further.

“So is that it?” she hisses. “You’ve had your fun and now you’re off? To your ‘family funeral’?”

She isn’t wrong. Taina rally can’t say she’s wrong, however much she hopes that she made some small positive difference here. So instead she bows then very deliberately steps off the roof and twists shadow on the way down, down, down.


	2. Session 1

Taine looks at Ariadne’s trump for a long moment. In the image, Ariadne is in a library, wearing robes of green with red accents, with a book in one hand. She has a look that is obviously striving for detached solemnity, but something about her hints that she’d prefer to be reading the book in her hand rather looking out of the trump at the viewer.

Taina can’t help wondering how she looks at the moment. Probably nowhere near as composed, as much as she’d like to be. Uncle Caine was supposed to be like the rest of her mother’s generation. Immortal. Ageless. Changeless. Going nowhere fast, just like Taina when she was travelling through Shadow.

Not dead, gone, never to be seen again.

It wasn’t as though she’d known him overly well. When she’d been growing up, he’d been mostly at sea, and the girls of Amber generally weren’t welcome there. Bad luck or not being able to fight or some other such nonsense, and that’d been one barrier that Taina had just never been bothered to try and climb. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when she was older. And Mother and Caine had never been close — he’d never been invited over like Uncle Bleys, Uncle Random, Aunt Flora or even Uncle Julian on occasion.

But she’d known Ariadne growing up, her mother’s apprentice, her mother’s daughter in ways that Taina never could be, was never interested in, and Taina’s older sister, a missing piece that she’d never really known that she’d wanted until one day Ariadne was just there, slotting in as if she’d always been present.

Not that they hadn’t fought, at times, when Ariadne wanted her space, or Taina wanted her attention or, well, when Taina had been a teenager. They’d fought quite a bit then, mostly Taina being moody and Ariadne being coolly unapproachable in a way that had just felt completely unfair.

But now it is her not-sister that is hurting, and it’s Taina’s turn to try and be the support. If Ariadne wants her to be, of course.

She concentrates on the card, pushing past the resistance that always seems so much greater for her than anyone else in the family. Eventually, she feels a presence at the other end of the contact.

Ariadne is looking composed in a black suit, accented by green gems in her brooch, bracelet and choker. Behind her, there’s a cliff and she can hear the sea somberly crashing and roaring from somewhere close by.

“Cousin,” Taina says. “I’m so sorry.”

Sorry is a word that Taina’s been taught time and again the royal family do not use lightly, that doing so admits something that she never should, that she can never take back — that she might be at fault.

But still, it seems appropriate for the current moment.

“Thank you, Taina,” Ariadne says quietly, seeming to appreciate the sentiment. “Will you be attending the funeral?”

"At your side, if you would not mind. I would not have you appear unsupported at this time, not in this family." Her mouth twitches slightly before she stills it. "See, I did not totally ignore mother's lessons, whatever she might claim."

It’s another thing she’s offering here, her support in this time of tumult, even aligning herself with Ariadne in the eyes of the family. It’s risky — potentially very risky — she does not really know what Ariadne has been doing in the decade-plus since Taina left Amber to find herself, nor any real idea of the dangerous currents of the latest politics and what danger this might put her in. And Mother has impressed upon her, time and again, how dangerous trusting even family can be. Especially family.

But Taina can’t deny herself this, not at the moment, nor her not-sister.

A ghost of a smile plays about Ariadne's lips as she seems to understand and accept the offer. "Not totally," she allows. "And I would be honoured to have you stand with me and my mother in this trying time. Come through?" She extends a hand and brings Taina through.

She leads Taina through a couple of shadows — so neatly that Taina almost misses the transitions — and Taina lets her, happy to let her take the strain that Taina feels shadow walking, especially so close to Amber. They walk around a corner and waiting impatiently there is a woman who looks a lot like Ariadne and Caine, but *old*. With grey hair and wrinkles. It’s not like she hasn’t seen older people out in Shadow. In Amber, even. But not like this, not in the context of family.

"It’s all well and good you wandering off into shadow whenever you feel like it,” the woman said snappishly.

It’s probably just because she’s around family, even Ariadne, but Taina instinctively tightens her grip on Pentempest. She’s not sure what she’s going to do with it, whether to offer to avenge the insult to her cousin, or maybe try to stop her cousin doing something she might regret, despite this really being none of Taina’s business.

The skin around Ariadne’s eyes tightens. “I did warn you,” she mutters, sounding younger than her for the first time that Taina can remember. Then, with an obvious effort, she smooths her face of irritation and says in a louder voice, "Mother, this is my cousin Taina, Fiona's daughter. I've spoken of her before.Taina, my mother, Miriam Barley." She glares at Taina, clearly daring her to laugh at her mother’s surname. She looks back towards her mother. "Taina has offered to stand with us at the funeral."

It’s… weird to see one of the family, one of her generation, interacting with a parent as something like an equal. Certainly it’s something that Taina has no experience of. It’s charming, in its own way, and a very different side to Ariadne than she’s ever seen before. If there’s a hint of the smile Taina feels bubbling inside on her face, she’s fairly she’s removed it by the time she’s finished a slight bow to Ariadne’s mother. "Ma'am," she says. "I regret the circumstances of our meeting." She’s uncertain whether or not Miriam counts as family, it being this close to Amber makes her unwilling to offer a second sorry in such a short time, even in the current circumstances.

"How's your father?" Miriam asks Taina, a little bluntly, a little sweetly.

It feels like an attack, is the first thought that flashes across her mind, even before the sting, that of a parent she’s never known registers. Not that it’s ever been a big priority for her, but she can’t say that she hasn’t wondered. And to have it thrown in her face like this, by someone who’s not even family…

She’s royal enough that the impulse to respond in kind, perhaps even with steel, does occur to her. But no. Miriam is Ariadne’s mother. And besides, isn’t this the kind of thinking that she’s been trying to escape. So, instead she merely contents herself with, "Never met him, to the best of my knowledge. Why do you ask?"

"We should get going," Ariadne cuts in, flashing Taina a quick tense look as she does so. "It wouldn't do to be late."

Miriam subsides and lets herself be led, Taina following along afterwards, her flash of temper still bothering her. The fact that it would have been taken as weakness if others of the family had seen that exchange, and not seen her respond fittingly doesn’t help in the slightest.

Ariadne and Miriam chat during the short journey to the funeral — far shorter than Taina could have managed, bar Trumping someone already there — but Taina stays aloof, tries not to listen too much about things that are clearly personal and not relevant to her in the slightest.

And then they are there, at a small shrine on the pebble shore of Amber, the cliffs of Kolvir stretching almost to the sky. A small crowd awaits them — some aunts, some uncles, some cousins, some people that Taina does not know. Not Mother, and Taina isn’t exactly sure how she feels about that.

Relief maybe, then repeats that to herself more certainly. She’s relieved that Mother isn’t here, nor Uncle Bleys, however much he might have been her tutor and ‘fun relative’ when she was younger. Shen’s here though, standing by Beatrice, and she can’t help the way her heart leaps as the face of her second favourite cousin and secret idol lights up briefly as they arrive. She gives her a brief wave, but Shen just gives her a terse nod in response.

Oh.

That look obviously wasn’t for her then.

She decides to keep an eye on Miriam instead. If she has as unguarded tongue with other members of the family as she did with Taina, it could get… unpleasant. And Ariadne is already burying one parent today. She doesn’t need to become an orphan as well. Luckily, for the moment she appears to be content to stare off into the sea and not approach anyone else, and so Taina lets her attention broaden.

Zillebeth — a girl today — approaches Ariadne, inquiring whether she is here to kill anyone, apparently on behalf of Julian. Thus implying that she, or Julian, thinks that there is someone attending who Ariadne would have a reason to see dead. Thankfully, Ariadne replies in the negative and seems to be sincere, but Taina can’t help worrying. Could it be that she just can’t read Ariadne anymore, if she ever could? Or is Zillebeth or Julian trying to pass Ariadne the backhanded message that there is, in fact, someone here that she should be trying to kill, someone that they, for whatever reason, are unwilling to tackle. Or maybe the intended effect is something else entirely, something that Taina is missing because she’s so out of the loop.

Or maybe it’s just Julian trying to keep the peace at such a solemn event. But really, what are the chances that that’s his only intention?

Honestly, after that, Zillebeth delivering a deliberate insult — asking Ariadne how Taina is, rather than asking her personally, as though she’s one of Ariadne’s possession — is almost a relief. Taina may not know why Zillebeth is acting that way — it isn’t as though she’s seen her in *years* — but she’s honestly not quite sure that she cares, just at the moment.

She’s mostly just regretting turning up at all, regardless of how much Ariadne hopefully appreciates her support.

And then Shen approaches Ariadne, still seeming to more or less pretend that Taina doesn’t exist.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find Shen's take on these events [here](https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/54219991/)


	3. Session 2

“Who’s that?” Shen asks. Not to Taina, of course, but she glances over to see who Shen is talking about all the same.

There’s a figure in a heavy black cloak standing atop the cliff. It’s very… extra and for a moment, she can’t help wondering if it’s Uncle Caine, come to dramatically declare that reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated.

Maybe it still is, but either not enough attention is being paid, as only Ariadne, Shen and herself seem to be paying any attention at all and she can’t help but think that Uncle Caine would be able to do much better if he actually tried, or too much, if he was actually trying to surprise everyone.

And there’s something not quite right about the picture, something not quite real. It takes a moment for Taina to realise what it is, but… The figure’s cloak isn’t moving in the wind that should definitely be blowing up there.

Then Ariadne, who had been concentrating so hard it was like she had almost fallen into a trance, says, “They’re not up there. They’re actually over there.” She points a little distance away on the beach and… yes… concentrating so hard it’s practically like a double image, she can just about make out a black cloaked figure there on the beach…

That is reaching inside their cloak for a black, spherical device that they’re winding up to throw.

Shit.

Even before she really thinks about it, there’s a knife in her hand and away, spearing the cloaked figure through the arm with enough force to make them drop what they were about to throw at their feet. Which starts beeping ominously with increasing intensity, seeming to cause the figure some alarm. They probably should have been focusing their attention towards us, though, because it’s right about then Shen reaches them and stuck their rapier through them with the kind of practiced elegance Taina would expect from her…

Just in time for the robed figure and Shen both to turn rainbow coloured and disappear in a flash of trump.

Double shit.

“Everyone, get away,” Taina yells at the non-family visitors, Zillebeth and what aunts and uncles that are present having already decided that discretion is the better part of valour.

“I’ve got it,” Ariadne grits out as the device stops beeping. “For as long as I’m concentrating anyway.”

Taina barely feels the strain as she picks up Ariadne, hands around the waist, so she can quickly portage her away without disturbing Ariadne’s concentration. “Just like old times,” she murmurs and apparently Ariadne can spare enough focus to make a strained face at her.

She puts her down in a convenient alcove and looks back to check the situation. The immediate area around the device is clear… except for Caine’s coffin.

Typical. But she isn’t going to let Ariadne down just because of a little potential mortal danger. As she approaches the coffin, she does her best to try to keep it between her and the device — she’d like to think it’d distress Ariadne a lot more if she was injured, after all. Her first attempt to pick it up actually does fail — it’s way heavier than she was expecting it to be, like it’s lined with lead or possibly has four or five people inside, not just one.

It’s… not something she can worry about just about now. It doesn’t explode at least when she does pick it up using her legs — the time she spent working out in Shadow paying off — and nothing seems to happen when she places it in a rocky alcove out of sight from the device.

Honestly, she’ll take that win, right at the moment.

“You might want to take a look at Caine’s coffin,” she murmurs as she returns to Ariadne’s side. “It’s about two or three times as heavy as I’d expect.”

Ariadne nods. “How good are you with bombs? I’d like to take a look at this thing if I could.”

Taina hesitates. It isn’t as though she has no experience, but… “I’ve got a bit of experience chucking them. Not so much disarming them, but I guess I can take a look?”

“Sounds good.”

Taina gives her a jaundiced look. “I’m sure it does, given you’ll be staying back here.” Then again, if they have to get Shen back, they might need all the help they can get. Not that Shen can’t look after herself — undoubtedly better than Taina could — but still. Foe with magical powers or backup, unknown situation. Maybe even Shen could be taken down. “I’ll take a look,” she says resignedly

She cautiously approaches it and draws a slim bladed knife to take a look. Typical. This close to Amber, she can’t even twist shadow to find a decent kit. Of course, bombs aren’t supposed to work either, but apparently rules are just for her and not other people.

Luckily, it doesn’t appear to be that complicated once she’s pried a panel off, designed to just be set off with a simple timer. A few simple cuts and she’s at least sixty percent sure it’s disarmed. Though if she’s wrong, at least whatever Ariadne is doing has stopped it from exploding, at least for the moment.

“It’s done,” she says as she returns to Ariadne’s side. She can see the moment that Ariadne stops concentrating and… there’s just a faint clink from further down the beach. Investigating cautiously, the device appears to have split into segments and fallen apart. Ariadne squats down and collects the pieces with a vaguely satisfied air before heading off in the direction of the coffin.

Okay, time to see how Shen is doing. Contacting Shen has always been a little unsettling the few times that Taina has done it. Maybe it was different back before she got the helmet, but Taina isn’t sure that she was alive back then. She concentrates on the trump of Shen’s helmet.

It opens quickly. That’s the least that could be said for it.

“Hello. This is. Shen. Please leave a message,” says the robotic voice. Now that’s she’s spent a few years on a mid to high tech world, she can’t help wondering how intelligent this thing is. Is it just a dumb protection/transcription device, or does it have a mind of its own? And Shen is known for being the chosen protege and successor of her mother Beatrice, to have started on her course, of facing foes on a hundred different battlefield for all that she’s less than a tenth, probably a twentieth of her mother’s age.

Which begs the question, was this something that Shen found out in shadow, or was it made for her? And, in either case, does anyone else have access to what it sees and hears?

“Um, Shen. This is Taina. Are you alright?”

“Shen says. I am fine. I have captured the robed figure.”

“Okay, cool. Uh, can you bring them through?”

“Shen says. No. Can you come to me. It will probably take me a while to get back.”

“I’ll… talk to Ariadne.” Shen could probably have gotten to Amber and back by the time it’d take Taina to reach her.

She looks over to Ariadne, who apparently has examined the coffin and is making her way back over to Taina with a disturbed look on her face. “Ariadne? Shen wants to know if we can go and get her.”

Ariadne touches Taina, joining in the conversation. Taina can’t see much of the world behind the helmet apart from a faint yellowy tinge, but doubtless Ariadne can do much better than her with this.

Ariadne nods. “Sure. We’ll be with you as soon as I can get us there.”

“Shen says. Thanks.”

Taina breaks the contact and shivers slightly. She shares a grin with Ariadne. “Is that just me..?”

Ariadne smiles slightly. ‘Yeah, that’s a little odd, even for my experiences.” She hesitates. “Inside the coffin… was a fairly alive half naked Corwin, with his silver rose pinned through one nipple. He indicated that I should keep this little act quiet?”

Taina finds that one eyebrow has quite involuntarily risen most of the way up her face. “A half naked Corwin?”

Ariadne shrugs uncomfortably. “The top half to be exact.”

“I see.” Taina can’t say it’s the oddest thing that she’s heard of one of the family doing, but it’s definitely up there. “This sounds like an elder thing. Let’s… just not get involved.”

Ariadne nods in agreement, obviously still uneasy. “Yeah. I guess that’s what I was thinking.” She then heads off to find one of her aunts and uncles — the nearest identifiable being Gerard, towering over the people around him like a hillock sticking out of a forest — to tell someone where and why they’re heading off, just in case, and to delay the resumption of the funeral while they do so.

Shadow-walking — proper shadow-walking, not the baby steps even she is forced to take near Amber — with Ariadne is, as ever, a dizzying experience. It isn’t just one thing that shifts, but two or three at once, or even a group. Taina knows for a fact that she couldn’t hold anything like this together without losing control of it all, having to descend into a hell-ride and just focus on one thing, keep just that constant.

And even then, she might not be as fast as Ariadne, who’s doubtless been taught many of the shortcuts that mother knows.

Almost before she knows it, they’re in a world with yellow sky and a deep blue crevasse, and standing on the plateau is Shen, towering over a red headed man, bleeding from arms, legs and torso, naked except for some boxer shorts. The both of them are surrounded by a virtual cloud of scraps of sliced up clothing littering the ground around them.

Shen nods at Ariadne. “He says that he’s Rinaldo.”

“Rinaldo, the son of Brand,” the man rasps, sounding as though he had been screaming. From the way he’s flopping around on the ground, Taina guesses that Shen has hamstringed all four limbs. “And I will have vengeance on all those who betrayed and killed him.”

“Uh, okay,” says Taina. Then his first words register.”’The’ son of Brand? I have to say, you don’t look like Clive. Or that much like the pictures of Brand that I’ve seen for that matter.”

Rinaldo frowns, seemingly more affronted by Taina’s words than his current state. “Clive, who is this Clive you speak of? And I **do** look like Brand. Everyone says so!”

Taina looks around at the others for confirmation. Ariadne looks momentarily thoughtful then nods and even Shen seems to agree with Taina if she has read that slight shrug correctly. “Well, everyone apart from the three of us, maybe. Apart from the red hair, I don’t think any of us really see it.”

Rinaldo writhes a bit more, hissing in pain, before giving up and lying on the floor. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I killed Merlin,” his voice wobbles a bit at that, “and I managed to shoot Caine through the heart,” oh, crap, thinks Taina, “and if you leave me alive…”

Taina strides forward and solidly boots him in the head, causing him to lose consciousness. When it became clear that Taina was taking a more martial path, Mother made sure to have her tutored in the Amber laws of vendetta, as if taking up a sword meant that she would inexorably start trying to poke holes in her relatives.

Which, given the family history, wasn’t exactly without a certain amount of basis, but so far it just really isn’t the way she rolls.

In any case, by those laws, as Caine’s daughter, Ariadne has the right to do with this Rinaldo as she chooses.“What do you want to do with him?” Taina asks Ariadne. “I mean, it seems a bit unlikely someone as incompetent as him actually managed to kill your father, but that is what he claimed.”

Ariadne looks thoughtful. “He had a bomb and apparently a rifle, both of which worked in Amber. It seems likely he had help. I think we need to question him and find out more.”

Shen hands a deck of Trumps over to Ariadne. “He had these on him,” she says. Taina doesn’t look too closely through them as Ariadne shuffles through the pack, but most of them are of places and people that she doesn’t recognise. There is one of Merlin with a red x across it and one of Caine with a red x that looks like it’s been erased and redrawn several times.

Shen says, “Since he apparently tried to kill Caine several times, maybe Caine faked his death to draw this guy out.”

“What about Merlin?” Taina says. “Do we think he’s dead?”

The three of them contemplate whether even what they know of their cousin could be taken down by what they’ve seen of Rinaldo.

“I can see it,” says Ariadne.

“I have to agree,” Shen concurs.

Taina resists the urge to make a face. Honestly, she doesn’t really know him — he had spent most of his time in Chaos or Shadow before she left, just paying the occasional visit to Amber and his family there — but she’d never really received an intensely positive impression of him. Quite possibly that was due to Mother — the words dilettante, amateur and dabbler tend to come up a lot whenever she discusses him — but also he honestly just seemed a little scatty and out of place in Amber. And that’s from the recollections of teenage Taina, who felt more than her fair share of things about herself during those years.

Still, she feels a little bad that she doesn’t feel **more** about the possible death of someone who is family, however distantly.

It certainly doesn’t incline her favourably to this new relation, it has to be said.

“I’ll find somewhere we can ask some more questions,” Ariadne says. Taina picks up Rinaldo’s body and she and Shen follow Ariadne through a few lightning quick shifts before they’re in front of sparkling clean building with mirrored windows standing in an otherwise decaying neighbourhood.

Ariadne strides up to the guard in front of the main doors, who doesn’t blink at the sight of an unconscious man draped over Taina’s shoulder. “I think you’ll find we’re expected,” she says coldly.

The man fumbles at a clipboard and pales. “This way, Inspector General,” he says, opening the door with a swipe card and leading them through a series of brightly up-lit white corridors before opening a door. Inside, the room has a metal bed with a set of open manacles attached. “Will these facilities be sufficient?”

Ariadne considers. “For the moment,” she says. “Though I’ll also need a full pharmaceutical array. Apart from that, make sure we’re not disturbed.”

The man practically bows in half. “Yes, Inspector General. Of course, Inspector General.” He leaves the room closing the door after him.

Ariadne concentrates. “There,” she says. “We should have more time before the funeral starts.”

Taina raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Ariadne hesitates before saying, “It’s not important. Without Fiona teaching you the intricacies of Pattern for several years, you probably wouldn’t understand anyway.”

Which, point. Especially given that Taina had spent several years trying to avoid Fiona teaching her much of anything. It just isn’t really her bag.

Ariadne then touches Rinaldo’s head and concentrates. After about a minute, she steps back, blinking. “I didn’t manage to get much,” she says. “Apart from that he seems to have something of a crush on Merlin.”

Taina’s eyebrow raises again. It seems to be doing that a lot today. “His cousin. Who he just killed.” That’s twisted. Ugh. It’s not as though she hasn’t ended up on opposite sides from a former lover once or twice, but still. She wouldn’t have tried to kill them specifically, would have tried to avoid it if at all possible.

Ariadne looks at her flatly. “In this family, are you really that surprised?”

Which, point the second. There really are days that remind her why she’s been avoiding Amber for most of the past decade. This one seems to be trying to hit on all of them.

There’s a buzzing at the door and Ariadne strides over and opens it. “Thank you,” she sys to the woman standing outside with a box filled with capped syringes filled with fluids of various colours. She shuts the door, then proceeds to go through her loot. Finally selecting two syringes, Ariadne first injects the full contents of one, “This should ease his pain,” then the other, “And this should loosen his tongue.” She then takes a small bottle, uncaps it and waves it under Rinaldo’s nose.

Even from Taina’s distance, the smell is pungent.

Rinaldo gags and his eyes fly open. “W-what?’ she asks.

“Where did you get the bomb and the rifle?” Taina asks. It’s… okay, despite all the unkind things she’s been thinking about this Rinaldo, she can’t help finding the fact that he managed to arrange this a little cool.

“Why should I tell you?” Rinaldo splutters then blinks, his eyes crossing slightly. Apparently the drugs here are pretty good. “I mean, did you really think that if Corwin brought a small army’s worth to Amber, that no one would manage to pick any up? Someone from Chaos maybe, who’d just seen these things blow lots of their comrades away? Did you really think no one else would realise their value?”

“Who did you get them from in Chaos?” Shen asks.

“They’re very rare and precious,” Rinaldo boasts. “It takes someone with a special kind of connections and a large amount of talent to locate them. Not just anyone could have managed that. I’d be surprised if anyone in Amber could rival that feat.”

“Yes, yes,” Shen says impatiently. “Name.”

“Jurt,” Rinaldo says and his face falls. “He’s the half-brother of… of… Merlin.” A tear trickles down the side of his face.

Taina frowns. “If you’re that cut up about Merlin dying, why did you kill him?”

Rinaldo sniffs. “I didn’t want to, but mother kept on at me. Said I had to kill Merlin to avenge Corwin’s part in Father’s death.” He looks up at Tains desperately. “I didn’t want to, but she kept on at me.”

Okay, either these drugs are **really** good or he’s just naturally that dramatic — which, given how he was acting when they first met him doesn’t seem entirely out of the question, shock and blood loss or no. Or maybe he’s playing them, trying to fool them into thinking he’s more incompetent than he actually is.

Taina honestly isn’t sure. With any other member of the family, she’d be fairly sure that it was option one or three, with three a definite likelihood in the case of mother or most of her generation. But Rinaldo is an unknown — she just doesn’t know. Though dropping the bomb at his feet, even with her aid, is a strike against him. As is the black cloak.

So, maybe?

But if it’s true, he’s more or less lost a thousand points of her respect.

What kind of cousin can he be if he lets his mother push him around like that?

“Who is your mother?” Ariadne asks.

“Jasra,” Luke says.

Ariadne, Shen and Taina all look at each other blankly. Maybe someone else will know who this Jasra is.

“A red headed woman who looks like you?” Ariadne hazards, presumably having seen her in his mind.

“I don’t look that much like her,” he sulks. “She’s… I love her, but I don’t like her. You know that kind of relationship?”

Taina at least can relate. There’s a sudden pressure in her mind, that of an incoming Trump. It could be Mother, she can’t help thinking, and she devotes all her attention to blocking it. By the time it fades, the conversation has moved on a little.

“No, no,” Rinaldo says. My next plan was to throw a bomb at Caine’s funeral.”

“But you didn’t have any other plans against the family,” Ariadne presses.

“I hadn’t got that far.”

Shen lifts her head, looking into middle distance. “Magdalena just tried to trump me,” she says. “But she just swore and hung up again.”

Taina raises her hand. “I just got a Trump call as well,” she says. “I thought it might be my mother though — I thought she might have heard about the attempted bombing.”

“So, as far as you’re aware, there aren’t any more plots against Amber?” Ariadne asks Rinaldo.

He giggles a little. “Not as far as I’m aware. Though who knows what mother has planned. Certainly not me!”

It’s Ariadne’s turn to look into middle distance. “Magdalena?” she says then starts to reach forward with one hand, before jerking slightly. “She was cut off,” she says. “She was being attacked by a horde of people with smiley faces painted on full face masks, but before I could bring her through, the connection was severed.” She roots around in a pocket and takes out her pack of Trumps, shuffling through them until she reaches Magdalena’s card. She concentrates on it, and Taina touches her arm, bringing herself into the connection.

It’s pretty much as Ariadne described. Magdalena is pretty much buried under a pile of bodies, all wrestling to restrain her. Despite that, she’s giving a pretty good account of herself, downing a couple of the people with one blow apiece. Taina reaches through the contact, connecting solidly enough that she manages to break the arm of one of Magdalena’s assailants before the call is severed once more.

Ariadne tries to make contact once again, but this time nothing happens. Either Magdalena has lost consciousness or whatever has been shutting down the trump calls has stopped Ariadne reaching her at all.

Shen shakes Rinaldo. “Do you have anything to do with this attack on Magdalena?”

Rinaldo’s head flops from side to side limply. “What attack, which attack, was she at the funeral? I don’t even know who she is, I couldn’t have thrown a bomb at her.”

“No,” Tania says. “She was being attacked by lots of people wearing smiley masks.”

Rinaldo giggles. ‘Haven’t heard of them, but they sound like a laugh.”

Ariadne says, “I can try and find her using Pattern, but I don’t know how long it will take.” She then takes another syringe and injects Rinaldo, who goes limp and unconscious.

Shen retrieves a gym bag large enough to hold his body from a cupboard. “We could carry him in there,” she says.

Ariadne concentrates and space seems to warp inside the bag. “Put him in now,” she says.

Taina picks up his limp body and deposits into the far too large inside of the gym bag. Ariadne concentrates again and Rinaldo’s body disappears and the inside of the gym bag returns to normal.

“If anything disrupts that, he should return to the inside of the bag,” Ariadne says. “In the mean time, he should only experience a few minutes of time passing.”

Taina shrugs and picks up the bag. It weighs about as much as an empty bag should, so she slings the strap around her shoulders in such a position that it hopefully won’t interfere too much with her movements if Rinaldo suddenly returns. She then unlaces one of her belt pouched and retrieves her own set of trumps. She shuffles out Gerard’s card and concentrates on it. “Uncle Gerard?” she says as he allows the connection.

“When are you going to be back for the funeral?” he asks bluntly.

Taina looks towards the others and relays the message.

“Ask him to give us an hour,” Ariadne says.

Taina does does and Gerard makes a face, “I’m fairly sure the others were hoping to start before then,” he says in a tone of voice that very much indicates he is one of those others. “But very well.”

“Um, Gerard, before you go, there’s something else. Your daughter has been attacked.”

“Is that all? She’s a big girl, she can look after herself,” he says, then mutters, “It wasn’t as though I was exactly looking for a child when I found her.”

Ouch. Not that Gerard had brought Magdalena up, but still. Most of the family seem to care a little more about their children then that. “Uh, we’re trying to find her. Do you know where she might have been?”

“She’s always going on about skiing. I think there’s a particular mountain on Shadow Earth… Mon Blunk or something, that she likes finding variation of.”

Taina relays that information and Ariadne’s eyes light up. “Okay,” she says. “I think I can find her from that.”

“Um, thanks Gerard,” Taina says. “We’ll try and be back in an hour?”

Gerard just nods, and she holds her hand over the face of his trump, breaking the connection.

“Come on,” Ariadne says, already walking for the exit from the room. “I’ve found her. Or at least three pieces of her.”

“Three pieces of her?” Taina asks having to almost jog to keep pace with damn Ariadne with her annoyingly long legs.

Shen, of course, has no such problem. Sometimes Taina really covets her legs.

Shift, shift, shift.

“Three signatures,” Ariadne says. “They all read like her. So, maybe pieces. Maybe decoya. We’ll see when we get there.”

Shortly, they’re on a snowy mountain ski resort. Taina blinks against the white harshness of the light, before manipulating shadow to find a pair of discarded goggles at her feet. A little way off, there are a cluster of lodges, with the odd person wearing heavy sky jackets moving around. A few cast odd glances at their little cluster of people in far lighter clothing. That… also probably wouldn’t be the worst idea, so Taina rustles up a ski jacket for herself as well. Ariadne shivers and does the same.

Shen, as ever, is seemingly untouchable inside her armour.

“Found the first signature, and it looks like Magdalena is there,” Ariadne says. “But I think the people who grabbed her spotted me looking at them.”

“Is that normal?” Shen asks.

“It’s the first time anyone has apart from Fiona.”

Well, that’s worrying.

Taina folds shadow again, leading them all to the next shadow over where there’s a rugged snowmobile waiting, with the keys in the ignition. Ariadne directs them until they’re almost at the chalet where Magdalena is being held, when Taina shifts shadow back just in time to crash the snowmobile through the front door.

There are a few people with smiley masks inside who spring to their feet, going for weapons. The one first is down from a fist to the jaw before they even manage to draw theirs. The rest don’t look like they’re going to be more of a problem. It’s… bad practice, but Taina can’t help being more distracted by getting a proper chance to see Shen in action than what their opponents are doing. Shen’s weapon flashes between forms, changing to best suit the environment — a dagger when she’s close to someone, a sword to smoothly block a blow, a mace when the weapon is already arcing down to lend more weight to the blow, even a halberd when she wants some more reach to sweep someone off their feet. All done with such practised efficiency that Taina almost aches to see it.

And all done with the kind of old fashioned nobility that Shen has always shown, even with the few sparring matches she’s graced Taina with. Sure, Taina might well be more or less keeping up with Shen in terms of sheer body count, but that’s only because she’s not the type of person who would give an opponent a chance, even if they’re not skilled enough to take it.

And then their opponents are all down, unconscious or dead and Taina can’t help but be a little disappointed. Both that it’s over so quickly and also that their opponents weren’t more skilled.

Magdalena’s lying there, tied up and unconscious. Taina can’t help looking down at her for a moment, before doing anything to free her. Like this, she doesn’t look like the woman Taina remembers from ten years ago, her face red and twisted with anger as she forced Taina’s head into a basin of lye. That sensation, that feeling of utter helplessness, that something was happening to her and there was nothing she could do to stop it, is why Taina trains her body every morning.

Not that teenage Taina didn’t kind of have some of that coming with the prank she’d played, she has to admit with a decades’ distance, but still. It’s not an experience she has any intention of repeating if she has anything to say about it.

Given the difference in their sizes, Taina figures that she’d still probably lose to Magdalena in an arm wrestling contest, but if she can keep a fight to punches and kicks, she thinks that she might have a chance.

Finally she bends over, unties Magdalena’s bonds then holds the smelling salts under Magdalena’s nose before dancing away. Magdalena grunts, then lashes out violently with one of her arms.

Called it. Taina really would not like to be the person who has to wake Magdalena up in the morning.

Magdalena props herself up and scowls at the the three of them. “Took you long enough.” She rubs her eyes and kicks one of the fallen figures in the head. There’s a sickening crunch from their neck.

Oh well. That’s one less person they can question. It isn’t as though they don’t still have plenty of candidates. Taina pulls the mask off to reveal a blonde fairly androgynous looking man beneath. She looks over at Magdalena. “Recognise him?” she asks.

Magdalena grunts. “Not that I can remember.”

Shen and Taina between them pull off a few more masks. More blond androgynous figures, some male, some female.

“Huh,” Ariadne says, “Either Magdalena’s pissed someone off with access to cloning magic or technology or…” She concentrates.

“Or?” Taina prompts after Ariadne hasn’t said anything for about thirty seconds.

“Or we somehow have a collection of shadows of the same person, though I’m not sure who the original is,” Ariadne finally says.

“What happened?” Shen asks Magdalena.

She shrugs. “I was skiing and suddenly there was a crowd of these guys,” another kick, another crunch. “They jumped me and managed to subdue me.”

“Really?” Ariadne asks, looking around. “Huh. Also, by the way, I’ve located the second signature and it looks like there’s a second Magdalena there as well.”

“What do you mean ‘another Magdalena’,” the current one growls. “There’s only one real Magdalena and that’s me.”

“Well, she’s got the same Pattern signature and looks the same to me, so who knows?”

Magdalena’s fist clenches at her side and she practically snarls as she starts marching towards Ariadne. Taina hurriedly gets between the two of them. “Well, let’s see what’s going on here. And get to punch more of the guys who attacked you. I think that’d be the best for everyone right?”

Magdalena eyes her suspiciously and for a moment Taina worries that she is actually going to get into a rematch of ten years ago. But in the end she just nods curtly. “Let’s go then.”

Taina twists shadow and the snowmobile coincidentally starts up again, carrying all of them in the direction Ariadne indicates. This time, though, as they’re travelling towards the next lodge, skiers wearing smiley masks start appearing, even though they’re not even in the same shadow.

“Oh, this **is** fascinating,” Ariadne trills.

Taina can’t help rolling her eyes a little at her enthusiasm, as she ducks down and finds an assault rifle that has been coincidentally stored under the sheet. Looking over, she’s completely unsurprised that Shen has had the same idea and she can’t helping sneaking a small grin at Shen as they both open fire on the skiers.

Naturally, there’s no answering smile lighting up Shen’s face, but, well, Taina can’t have everything.

There isn’t really much in the way of artistry when using assault rifles, so Taina has to settle for controlled bursts, centre of torso which seems to take case of matters satisfactorily. She does lower the rifle and almost sever the left leg of one assailant, causing them to collapse into the next one and the next one after that, causing a small pile up which a few more skiers crash into, creating a nice target for a slightly longer controlled burst.

Finally, there’re almost there but when Taina shifts back to the original shadow, they’re in front of the chalet and there’s a group of masked figures holding a second Magdalena, barely conscious, with a knife to her throat. Before anyone else can react, Taina fires and puts a bullet through the neck of the figure holding the knife, who falls limply to the ground. Their Magdalena dives forward, fists flailing and starts punching and kicking masked figures, the second Magdalena shaking off whatever daze she’d been in to join her. Taina and Shen join them, lending some elegance to the proceedings, as well as taking some more of the figures alive, just in case.

Taina is busy knocking the last figure out — woman, she thinks — when she hears low roars and a crash from behind her. Spinning around the Magdalenas are wrestling with each other, destroying a pile of firewood as they do so.

“Die, fake,” one of them snarls as she wraps her hands around the other’s throat. On closer inspection, Taina is fairly sure that it’s the one they rescued first.

Does that mean anything? Surely the more real one, if it’s either of the two, should be the stronger. Maybe?

Exchanging glances with Ariadne and even Shen, no one else seems to have an idea about what to do with this angry mass of muscle.

Oh, Unicorn, this is going to suck.

She wraps her arm arm around the throat of the one currently throttling the other and squeezes as hard as she can. For long moments, it doesn’t seem to do anything as her arm strains against the corded muscle of Magdalena’s neck but slowly, slowly she goes red until she lashes back with one elbow, glancing off Taina’s side and almost sending her spinning.

The other Magdalena takes advantage of the opportunity to break free and land several vicious blows in Magdalena one’s gut. Shen tries to drag the second away, but gets sent flying with a blow from the second’s arm. But between the second’s distraction and the way the first’s eyes bulge after the blows to her stomach, Taina manages to drag the first away herself before with a neat flip Taina finds herself on the ground.

For a moment, seeing Magdalena towering above her, it’s just like when she was younger, but then she rolls to her feet before Magdalena can do anything to her and she reminds herself. She’s bigger now — if not exactly big by the standards of this family — stronger and faster too. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to win a fight against Magdalena even now, but she’s damn sure that she could let her known she’s been in one.

Thankfully both Magdalena’s seem content to just stand and pant for now, glowering at each other and the rest of them.

“Come on,” Ariadne says brightly. “There’s still another one of you to rescue.”

“Not another one of me,” the two Magdalena’s say in chorus, then glare at each other once again. But at least they don’t seem to be reinitiating hostilities.

The trip to the third Magdalena is quieter, and when they get there, Ariadne uses her sight to look within.

“There,” she says. “That should make things a bit easier.”

But before Taina can ask what ‘that’ was, there’s sound from within the chalet, and that means go time. Crashing in through the door, there’s five of the figures around the table. Two appear to be choking, two are rising to their feet going for weapons and one makes a break for the other exit. Trusting Shen to take the two, Taina sprints for the one trying to make an exit and body checks her, knocking her out for good measure once she’s on the ground.

Magdalena the third is tied up and unconscious, but with a strategic waving of salts under her nose, Taina wakes her up and skips away again. When she spots the other Magdalenas, she glowers but before she can open her mouth, Ariadne chips in with, “Yes, yes, you’re the real Magdalena, the others are obviously fakes, but do you have any idea how this,” she gestures at the three of them, “happened?”

It seems to be more or less the same from all of them. They were all skiing on the slopes, they were all attacked, they all woke up in various chalets.

They all insist that they are the real Magdalena, but Taina supposes that’s just to be expected.

She can’t imagine what it’d be like to wake up in their position. Not only to be taken out by a rabble like this, but to waken, helpless, only to discover that the unthinkable had happened, that you’d been duplicated to such an extent that not even your cousins could tell the difference.

She shivers. She’s fairly sure that Mother would be able to tell which one was her, if anyone could, but what if even she… or she decided that one of the other copies was the real one?

She can’t help feeling a little sorry for her cousin, even if it is Magdalena.

“Huh,” Ariadne says, dragging her attention back over there. “Most of them are just shadow creatures, but this one,” she says, prodding the last one that Taina knocked out in the ribs, “appears to be infused with some Chaos power.”

“That’s the one we want to speak with then, I guess,” Taina says.

Shen nods.

Taina can’t help noticing that both she and Shen are keeping wary eyes on the three Magdalenas but, at least for the moment, they seem more or less quiescent, paying more attention to the figure on the floor. Shen quickly and expertly binds the woman on the floor, taking off her mask to reveal a face much like all of the others.

Taina waves the salts under her nose, and the woman also recovers consciousness with a coughing and a spluttering.

Good. It would be supremely unfair if she did better than a scion of Amber.

“None may rule the jewel of Amber and Chaos,” she declares as soon as she is able.

“What?” Ariadne says.

“None may rule the Amber of jewel and Chaos.”

“That isn’t-“ Taina starts.

“None may Chaos the Amber of jewel and rule.”

“I can shut her up again,” one of the Magdalenas says, clenching a fist.

“Is it any wonder that someone from shadow may decide that they’ve had enough of Amber and Chaos?” the woman says. “When you kill us in our millions, destroy our worlds, play with our very existence like you would a toy?”

Ariadne shrugs as if to say ‘you’ve got me’, Shen is impassive and the Magdalenas roll their eyes. “I’ve tried to make things better where I could,” Taina offers.

The woman glares at her. “Like I said, some of you play with us like you would a toy.”

Which, well, Taina can’t exactly deny. It isn’t as though she’s ever really tried to pretend to herself that she’s living a childhood fantasy, playing around in places she can actually are a difference, intervening in ways she feltsafe - defeating oppressors, overthrowing tyrants, killing people who make other people’s lives worse by their very existence.

She doesn’t have much idea about what to do after that point. She’s honestly never really tried.

Maybe she will, when she’s a little older.

“So, did you gather all of these shadows?” Ariadne asks. “And how did you?” She indicates the three Magdalenas.

“A strike back against the oppressors,” the woman proclaims.

Taina asks, “What’s your name?”

“You can call me Jewel.”

Huh, as in none may rule… maybe.

“So, about how you knew to attack Magdalena?” Taina asks.

“The first blow!” Jewel says.

It goes on like that for a bit, with Ariadne leading the questioning, with Shen and Taina chipping in. The Magdalenas mostly seem content to let the others talk, splitting their attention between glowering at Jewel and glowering at each other. Jewel never really gives any clear answers and eventually Ariadne injects her with knockout juice.

“It’s about time to get back to Amber for the funeral,” she says.

Magdalena one says, “Whose funeral?”

Taina can see Ariadne smile tightly, so she answers before Ariadne has to. “Caine’s,” she says.

“Huh,” Magdalena two says. “That was today?”

“That was today,” Shen confirms, showing the same instinct to protect Ariadne at this time that Taina does.

Hang on a second. Taina takes out her trump deck, shuffles through it until she has Magdalena’s card and concentrates on it. She makes contact and Magdalena two answers.

“Yes?” she says.

Huh.

Taina shares a glance with Ariadne and Shen. “You try it as well,” she says to Ariadne, who produces her own card.

“It’s blocked,” she says. She then tries again after Taina drops her contact and gets Magdalena two again. “Huh. That definitely means… something,” she says. “Probably that we need more tests,” she adds hurriedly before there can be any resumption of hostilities between the Magdalenas.

“So,” Taina interjects, turning to the Magdalenas. “What do you want to do with Jewel here?” Partially because, hey, the laws of vendetta does mean that the Magdalenas get first say here, a lot more to do with the fact that it will hopefully distract them from each other.

“Kill her,” Magdalena one says.

“Kill her,” Magdalena three says.

“Blind her, stick her in a dungeon for a few centuries, and not the good one,” Magdalena two says.

Ariadne, Shen and Taina exchange another one of those glances that seems to be becoming more familiar as this trip goes on. Taina can’t help feeling a little warm that Shen is at least acknowledging her presence now.

Not that it means anything, of course. Doubtless when they’re not faced by a fractious trio of their strongest cousin, things will go back to normal.

“Let’s stick her in a dungeon,” Taina says.

Magdalena one and thee look mutinous. “I want to kill her,” one says.

“Well, you can always kill her later if we stick her in a dungeon,” Ariadne says brightly. “Can’t really blind her and stick her in a dungeon if you kill her first.”

“I guess,” says three.

“Let’s go,” Ariadne says, and starts shifting them.

It takes approximately one second for Taina to realise that she’s left Magdalena one and three behind. Looking over at Shen, she’s noticed too.

"Um,” Taina says. “Why aren’t we taking all of them?”

Ariadne rolls her eyes. “Fine!” she says, and then all three Magdalena are with them.

The trip to Amber to as quick as the one out. As they get close, there’s a sudden tug on Taina’s shoulder as the gym bag she’s been carrying all through this abruptly has the weight of a body within it.

“Is this expected?” Taina asks, checking inside to make sure that, yes, there is a Rinaldo curled up, intact and unconscious inside it.

Ugh. She almost forgot that he’d only been wearing his boxers when they’d stored him.

“Oh, quite. I can’t maintain that this close to Amber,” Ariadne says airily as if of course Taina should have known that.

Taina tries to share an exasperated look with Shen, because of course her not-sister thinks everyone should know what she spent years learning from Mother. But Shen isn’t looking at her, yet again. Maybe she’s back to pretending Taina doesn’t exist, something which doesn’t drive a small knife through her heart. Or maybe she just has come to know Ariadne better since Taina has been gone, so that this **isn’t** any kind of surprise to her.

It doesn’t matter, Taina tells herself. It doesn’t matter at all.

Ariadne carries on and soon Kolvir is stretching above them, the city of Amber decorating its lower slops, the castle on a higher plateau overlooking it. Luckily, as royal scions, it isn’t any trouble to make their way through the streets and into the castle. The guards look askance at the triple Magdalenas but, to a man, shrug, obviously resigned to royal family business being royal family business and none of theirs.

They dump Jewel in a dungeon, bound and blindfolded just in case. Rinaldo Taina decides to keep with her, just in case. He had Trumps and he at least has a mother — it’s always possible that she could rescue him by Trump and at least if Taina is there to keep an eye on him, she might be able to go along for a ride.

She’d even be able to trump and bring through her cousins, or at least Ariadne, unlike Shen.

Finally, they’re all back where they started this afternoon, on the beach side shrine. The coffin has centre place. Random gets up, clears his throat and begins to speak…

Just in time for Corwin to burst up half naked from the coffin, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a trapdoor spider, grab Random and drag him back into the depths.

Oh yes. There had been that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find Shen's take on these events [here](https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/54549559/)


	4. Session 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shen's player has also been doing diaries for the sessions which I've retroactively linked for the previous sessions for those interested. Same events, often very different take. In the future, I'll either link Shen's diary at the bottom when I post a diary entry if Shen's diary has been completed first, or add the link when it goes up.

Shen charges the coffin. Ariadne immediately starts concentrating.

Taina… stays back and does nothing, just yet. Mother always impressed upon her the wisdom in staying out of the plots and grudges of her aunts and uncles, and whatever is happening, it definitely falls under that category.

Also she can’t help but notice that none of her aunts and uncles are moving towards the coffin themselves, seeming perfectly content to let Shen spring any surprises.

Brave, noble Shen. Of course she’d volunteer without thought for that.

Shen flings open the coffin lid. “It’s empty,” she calls, then reaches into the coffin and picks up a sheaf of papers.

Florimel and Gerard look surprised, Beatrice, Julian and Llewella do not. Taina knows enough not to trust any of their reactions.

After shuffling through the papers, Shen gets to the last one and says, “This one says ‘Sorry, I need to borrow Random and the Jewel for the weekend — Carl’.”

“Does anyone know what the name Carl might mean?” Taina asks. Does it mean something? An in-joke? Is there a clue there which might tell her what’s going on?

“It’s a name he used to go by,” Florimel says. Thanks, auntie, that’s less than useful.

“There are traces of Trump within the coffin,” Ariadne finally says. “I can try and trace them, but it’ll take a lot of time.”

Shen nods and immediately moves beside her, weapon not quite unsheathed, but definitely in a position where it can quickly deployed to counter any physical threat. Notably, Taina can tell she’s keeping an eye on her relatives as well as Julian’s guards.

Huh. Interesting, now that she thinks about it, that Random didn’t have any of his men here. Did he really trust his relatives and specifically Julian that much?

Still, there’s finally something that Taina thinks she can usefully contribute. “Does anyone know if there’s anywhere Corwin likes to hang out?”

“He spent a lot of time on Shadow Earth,” Florimel says. A quick look towards Ariadne confirms that she seems to have at least a vague idea where that is.

“Because of course he’s going to just go back there,” Julian sneers.

“Well, it’s a place to start,” Taina says. “And it’s more use than any of your guards have been. I mean, at least they managed to stop a man in a dramatic black cloak from approaching the funeral to throw a bomb. Oh. Wait.”

Julian looks down his nose at her, something which is distressingly far too easy for him.

Curse her mother’s genes.

Probably unwisely, that prompts her to continue. “And at least they helped stop the King from being kidnapped, or even did much of anything when that happened. Again, oh. Wait.”

“What happened when you went after the bomb thrower?” Beatrice interrupts, apparently having had enough of the family repartee.

Ariadne opens her eyes and leads them through what happened. A bit more completely than Taina might have done, to be honest, though she guesses that Shen, as wonderful as she is, would probably have filled Beatrice in on anything Ariadne omitted.

“If this Jewel is a denizen of Chaos, did you dose her appropriately?” Beatrice asks.

The three of us look at each other, and Ariadne shrugs. “I gave her the standard dose.”

Beatrice rolls her eyes. “I guess I better check on her then.” She pulls out a trump, goes chromatic and disappears.

Taina bops over to Ariadne. “Where’s your bag of drugs?” she asks. Ariadne pulls a generous handful of syringes out of what looks like a doctor’s bag at her side and hands them to her. Taina then pulls out her own trump of Castle Amber and concentrates on it.

Beatrice is already some distance ahead of her, pacing quickly on those unfairly long legs of her. Taina rolls hers eyes, mutters about how there are far too many tall people in this family, and dashes after her. By dint of the fact that she is more than happy to compromise her dignity by jogging, she actually manages to get to the dungeon ahead of Beatrice.

Inside her cell, Jewel is not only conscious, but playing with what looks like a standard deck of cards, which she definitely didn’t have when they’d dragged her in there earlier.

Great, just great.

With a barely stifled growl, Taina unlocks the cell door. Jewel has just enough time to look up and say, “Oh, you’re finally-“ before Taina hits her solidly in the head with the hilt of a dagger and knocks her out again. Then it’s a simple matter of sticking her with three syringes, confiscating the cards and handing the remaining syringes to the guards with an order to stick Jewel with one every time she started regaining consciousness.

“You were right,” she says to Beatrice as she passes her on the way down to the dungeon. “She did need a higher dose.”

By the time she makes it back to the beach, Ariadne is up and pacing around, casting occasional glares towards Julian. What had he done now?

“I’ve located Corwin and Random,” she says when she catches sight of Taina. “They’re near the other Pattern.”

There’s another Pattern? Maybe she should have paid more attention to Mother’s lessons. Or, well, any attention apart as it pertained to how to shift shadow and leave Amber as soon as possible.

“Can you take us there?”

“Sure. It’ll take several days though.”

Wow. Taina doesn’t even want to think how long it’d take her by her lonesome.

“Caul can go with you,” Beatrice says from behind Taina, totally not making her jump a little and maybe giving her some sympathy regarding Shen for when Taina did that to her. Which… well, it isn’t totally necessary, but Shen is generally so composed, that it’s fun seeing her ruffled a little.

And speaking of Shen, she glowers at the news, but nods stiffly.

“Come on, sis,” Caul says, walking up to Shen with a big grin on his face. “A road trip sounds like fun.”

Shen groans loudly.

“Um, what are we going to do with Rinaldo here?” Taina says, waving around the gym bag in which his unconscious body is currently curled up in. “I don’t want to take him with us, but we know that he has access to his own trumps, and at the very least a mother who might well be interested in freeing hm. Leaving him in the Amber dungeon is just asking for trouble.”

“Leave him with me,” Zillebeth says. “I’ve got a personal shadow in Arden that trumps can’t reach. And I can guarantee that he’ll be well guarded.” Taina’s fairly certain that Zillebeth’s trying to look spooky, but she honestly isn’t quite reaching it, at least as far as Taina’s concerned.

Maybe when Zillbeth has another few centuries, like their father.

But it’s a good idea. “Sure,” she says. “We’ll drop him off on the way.”

The Magdalenas decide to stay in Amber. Likewise, all of Taina’s aunts and uncles — for all that rescuing Random and retrieving the Jewel of Judgement is apparently vital, none of them seem particularly eager to go and do it.

Not when they have cannon fodder they can get to do it for them whilst they manoeuvre amongst themselves, Taina can’t help cynically thinking.

“Why did Mother even insist we take you along, brother,” Shen mutters. “It’s not like you’ve ever done anything apart from run away from her expectations.”

“Hey, it’s not like that is a crime,” Taina interjects, feeling the need to defend a cousin’s choices. “I mean, just because you wanted to become Beatrice’s chosen protégée, doesn’t mean he had to.”

After all, it isn’t exactly as though Taina had followed her mother’s vision for her future.

“Besides,” Caul snipes. “It’s not as though I was the one too afraid to walk the Pattern.”

Ariadne and Taina blink. “You haven’t walked the Pattern?” Ariadne asks.

“I can navigate shadow,” Shen says uncomfortably. As quick as lightning, she reaches forward, grabs the fingers of Caul’s left hand and wrenches them, breaking them with a horrible crunching noise.

Taina can’t… she can’t… she can’t quite believe that Shen just did that to her brother. It’s not as though Taina is a stranger to violence. She’s killed more than her fair share of people off in shadow.

But they hadn’t been family. And she likes to think that it never been with that kind of easy cruelty, that it’d always been for a better reason than because someone had been teasing her.

It’s… she can’t think about this at the moment. She just can’t.

A glance around shows that Ariadne also has the far too still face of someone repressing their reaction. The only person who doesn’t seem discombobulated by Shen’s actions is Caul himself, laughing lightly and saying something about picking Shen up.

Shen’s face darkens again, but before she can do anything, before Taina can argue herself out of it, Taina is dashing forward and wrapping her arms around Shen’s armoured waist and hoisting her up.

“See,” she says. “It’s not that hard to do.”

Shen goes very still. For a moment, despite the fact that Taina knows her, has always looked up to her, Taina doesn’t know quite what she’ll do. Doesn’t quite know how she’ll react if Shen tries to do to her what she did to Caul.

But all she does is very stiffly say, “Please put me down,” and Taina does, doing her best to pretend that her heart didn’t skip a beat back then.

Caul, of course, almost falls over with laughter.

It’s just about then that Ariadne finds a car that will drive this close to Amber. It’s a long dark green convertible. With red leather seating, of course. “Shen’s in charge of music,” she says, settling herself in front of the wheel, Shen hopping in beside her. Caul and Taina are left to take the back seats.

Honestly, Taina can’t say that she minds. Her stomach is squirmy enough as it is. She really doesn’t want to test it in proximity to Shen right about now.

It’s nothing, this little revelation. Just a wrinkle. And if it does seem like the relationship between Shen and Caul is a little uncomfortably like what she’s heard of the relationships between their parents and their generation of siblings… well, maybe that’s just the way things go in the royal family.

Part of her can’t help but wonder if that’s the reason the relationship between her and Ariadne is do cordial, that they’re sisters of choice rather than of blood.

She can’t imagine wanting to hurt Ariadne, not even when she was a moody teenager, and she thinks, she hopes, she doesn’t have any reason not to believe that Ariadne feels the same way about her.

Even if maybe Taina has picked Ariadne up and run off with her a few too many times for the comfort of her dignity.

She blinks, drawn out of her musings as Caul draws a pistol out of his jacket with his good hand. “… And if you weren’t so socially inept, maybe you’d know people as well that could get you something like this. It can fire in Amber.”

“Where did you get that?” Shen practically hisses.

Caul shrugs, lackadaisically. “Someone in Chaos. Kurt or someone.”

“Jurt,” Taina says. “What did you pay for it with?”

“Oh, nothing really,” Caul says, not sounding at all concerned. “He just wanted to have a family tree of everyone in Amber, which, well, worthless, really. Right?”

Shen reaches back and squeezes Caul’s broken fingers. “No, not worthless. You gave information to the enemy.”

And, well, Taina can sympathise, kind of. Even if it still twists her stomach to see it happen. If this Jurt is willing to give out valuable weapons to people in exchange for that kind of information, he undoubtedly had a reason for it. Even if Taina’s not sure why just yet.

And it isn’t as though he’s a friend to Amber, given that he also armed Rinaldo.

Caul continues to rag on Shen, and whilst she fires back, Taina can’t help but notice that she’s definitely not getting the best of the exchange. If nothing else, Caul doesn’t seem to care about the ammunition she’s using — about how he’s a disappointment to Beatrice, a disgrace.

And maybe Taina can’t help her stomach twisting in a different way.

“If it helps, you’ve always been my idol,” she interjects after Caul has levied another volley in Shen’s direction, about how she’s too trusting.

Shen blinks. “Really, Why?” she asks.

And, well, this is a subject that Taina can expound upon. And maybe has, once or twice, to Ariadne. “Well, it's just, you're **Shen**. You chose to study under the greatest warrior in all of Amber! Sure, Uncle Bleys is great and all, but I mean, you!Your conquest of the Isle of Severed Shadows was nothing short of brilliant, your infiltration of the Weirmonken -- especially given your lack of shifting -- was flawless, and you managed to get a passing grade with a sabre from Beatrice at the youngest age of any of the family. Sure, I've played around a bit, maybe helped a few small rebellionshere and there, even a little war on occasion, but you! Your sword work, your technique, your form, your experience—they're amazing!"

And it’s true. It’s all true. Even if it doesn’t quite seem as, well, correct as it might have been before yesterday.

Shen just sits there, jaw working for a moment. "Excuse me," she says. Then she opens the car door and steps out, hitting the ground at a roll and disappearing as Ariadne fails to stop shifting shadow in time. By the time Ariadne reverses back to her, she’s crouched by the side of the road, a scream abruptly cutting off when she see the rest of them.

Ariadne pulls up beside her, and Shen very dignifiedly rises to her feet and gets in.

“Are you okay?” asks Taina, not quite sure what’s going on.

“Yes,” says Shen stiffly.

Taina waits, but there’s nothing else. Not apart from Caul seizing upon the opportunity to tease Shen about how he always thought she was a little stiff, but didn’t realise that she’d have problems in not falling out of a car.

Hours pass and eventually Ariadne declares that she’s tired. After a bit of consultation, the horizon opens up, slowly inverts and then they’re driving along the inside of a gigantic ring. Guns and other less identifiable protrusions track them as they pull up to a fortified high tech facility.

“I believe you’ll find we’re expected,” Ariadne says. “Please make sure that we’re not followed.”

“Understood, Admiral,” a synthesised voice says, and a door appears in the wall in front of them.

They’re just getting settled down when there’s a ping. “There has been an intruder,” the same voice as before says. “They have been dealt with.”

“Show us,” Shen says.

A holographic display flickers into being, and a video plays of a person wearing a smiley mask riding a moped abruptly appearing in the shadow before being annihilated by the facility’s weapons.

“Huh,” Taina says. “So apparently that’s a thing.”

There’s a bit of discussion about what it could mean, including filling Caul in on the basics, but no consensus.

The group go explore their assigned rooms — luxurious in the kind of high tech way that Taina kind of feels like she’d need a few months to properly suss out — before Taina goes to find Shen.

“Since we’re going to be spending the night here, waiting for Ariadne to recover, would you mind running me through a training regimen?” she asks, resisting the urge to curl a lock of hair around a finger whilst she does so.

Shen looks at her for a moment. “You really want me to try and train you?” she asks skeptically.

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re the chosen protégée of Beatrice. You’ve seen and done and know so many more things than me. I’m just really an amateur compared to you.”

Shen stares at her stony faced then nods curtly, and, despite the whole unpleasantness earlier, Taina has to stop herself from skipping a little as she follows her.

One of the upsides to being in an utterly futuristic military installation is that once Shen runs her through some increasingly complicated katas — which Taina doesn’t do too badly at, if she does say so herself — there’s plenty of scope for simulated scenarios and foes.

It’s… she knows that she doesn’t complete the exercises with anything like the efficiency that she’s sure Shen would, and she can’t help adding her own flair to how she does solve the problems… but it’s **fun**. It’s just so satisfying having to react to things that only someone who’s been trained in all the subtleties and layered tactics by someone who has spent over a thousand years can set up. It’s wonderful to have fights that are definitively the result of a mind not her own, playing out whatever drama she’s thought up this week.

And, well, she can’t deny to herself that in the thick of things, she might be playing up a little to Shen as well.

At various points, Ariadne and Caul are there in the background observing. Ariadne at least has a knowing smirk on her face as she catches Taina’s eyes and Taina has to seriously resist the urge to stick her tongue out at her. This is not what she thinks it is, no matter how much she may have teased Taina about her crush on Shen in the past.

Catching sight of Caul and his bandaged fingers, she can’t help thinking that maybe it isn’t that at all any more.

Or at least different.

Or at least like it should be different.

She’s not sure. She really hasn’t had enough time to put it all into perspective, to figure out how she feels yet.

Eventually, sweating, limbs gently burning with the mild kind of exhaustion that tells her she could easily carry on, but now is a good time to be stopping for the night, she bounces down in front of Shen.

“Thanks,” she says. “So, did I do well?”

She can’t help hoping, just a little.

As ever, Shen’s face is still. "Very... creative. Well done."

Which sounds good to Taina.

Shen and Ariadne disappear off together, Caul goes back to his room. And Taina…

Taina guiltily feels that someone else needs to know about what’s happened. Someone that she’s not sure she wants the others to know about. She exits the facility, sneaks out of the shadow, shuffles Mother’s card out of her trump deck and concentrates.

Mother answers almost immediately. She reclining in either her suite in Amber, or one that looks a lot like it. Looking at the shade of the sky out of the window, Taina favours the latter explanation.

"Taina. How was the funeral?" she says. She sounds like she’s surprised by this, an impression Taina instinctively distrusts.

"Almost explosive. Someone claiming to be 'the' son of Brand — who didn't look a lot like Clive — turned up and dropped a bomb at his feet. Some people have the strangest reactions to me putting a knife through their arms."

"And you disarmed him?" she says, measured, wearing what looks like a proud little smile.

Taina shrugs, trying not to hope that she means that this time. "Well, of that at least. He tried trumping away, but Shen was close enough to go with him and disabled him on the other side." She makes a face. "I wish that had been the only thing going on."

"I take it your newfound cousin wasn't the only party trying to take advantage of a family gathering?"

"Pretty much,” she says and briefly explains the Magdalena and Jewel situation.

"Its not unknown for Shadows to take umbrage against Amber. What happened to Magdalena might be fascinating." Mother looks visibly contemplative "I wouldn't know about Dworkin, but if you could ask Ariadne to persuade Clive to try capturing Magdalena's image..."

"Could the others be some kind of Chaos denizens that can hide their power from Ariadne?"

"If there were, I suspect there wouldn't have been another Magdalena for you to find. There are stranger things in Chaos that can steal faces or bodies, but I've not made a study of them, and it benefits the Courts to keep a few trumps up their sleeve. I'd say to keep them away from the Pattern, but I don't think Benedict would let them anywhere near it."

Taina winces. Mother… "Beatrice, you mean."

She nods, not really apologetically or anything.

Taina rolls her eyes, but leaves it be. It’s… not worth it. She’s given up hope that Mother will listen to her about anything like this. "And then there's the other thing. Someone who looked a lot like Corwin grabbed Random, complete with Jewel, during the resumed funeral then trumped off to near another Pattern? My aunts and uncles in attendance were very concerned about this, so concerned that they sent myself, Shen, Caul andAriadne off to investigate, whilst they stayed behind and did... things. Very important things, I'm sure." She doesn’t bother to hide her sarcasm.

There's a little tell at the mention of Corwin. A little movement of her tongue against the inside of her cheek. "Random asked me once, in the utmost privacy, if the Jewel could be used to undo Amber. I told him that there was another Pattern in play."

Ugh. Taina really hates having to try and think through these things. Not helped by the fact that Mother seems to treat teaching anyone anything as yet another game she can play, rather than just trying to impart knowledge. ”You think that Corwin might be trying to do something to this other Pattern? Undo it maybe?"

"Why would he? With Merlin and another generation he could play Dworkin to his own Amber."

Dworkin. Mad magician. Created the Pattern and the Trumps for the royal family. "So you think he might be trying to claim it with the Jewel?" But why would Corwin settle for being the vizier when he could be the king?

"I suspect if Corwin wanted to, he could draw another of his Patterns."

Another? ”Has he drawn one before?" A pause. "Did he draw this one?"

"Yes, and yes, in the belief that the existing Pattern might have been damaged beyond repair. Don't tell Ariadne. I should hope she can figure this out by herself."

Taina gives her a look. Games, constantly games. Even, especially, with her apprentice. "Fine. So, what do you think he mightbe doing with the Jewel? Modifying his Pattern? Shoring it up? Trying to make it more powerful than the Amber Pattern? Is there anything we ought to be aware of?" Could Mother actually give a straight response?

"I suspect that he is reinforcing his Pattern. The Jewel is powerful, but I don't believe that creating a stronger Pattern is within its capabilities.” An answer of uncommon clarity. “As for what to expect, expect Corwin. He's managed to surprise all of us." Ah, back to form.

"So what if he says he can't be disturbed otherwise it'll be a calamity, or some such?” Taina tries. “It's what I'd say if I were him, regardless of whether it is true."

Mother manages to smoothly draw a dagger from one sleeve, without any one motion seeming too suspicious on the way, before sheathing it with much the same subtlety. Taina guesses that’s an answer, of sorts. Though she’s really not sure the others will go for that. "Make sure Ariadne keeps an eye out. Something is rooting around through Shadow." And back to the plain enigmatic.

Taina suppresses a sigh. “Another of these Jewels followed us here. Though it was destroyed, odds seem goodthat there are more. Do you know if there'sany chance they have a connection to the Jewel of Judgment?"

"From what you've told me, I would suspect not. They would need to be attuned to the Pattern first, and they would need the blood of Amber before they could attune to the Pattern."

"Just a quick check, though — did the Jewel have anything to do with drawing the Patterns? Or is it merely useful for extant Patterns?" Her head begins to hurt trying to decode all the circles and allegories that her mother insists on speaking in.

She furrows her brow a little, her scholarly side showing. "To my understanding... an individual attuned to the Jewel can create a new Pattern wholesale, though I suspect anything else Corwin might create with it would be an extension of his existing Pattern, much as Rebma is linked to Amber."

An actual semi-independent thought occurs. Honestly, Taina’s a little surprised. “Was the Jewel used to create the original Pattern to the best of your knowledge? If so, it can't be just people attuned to the Pattern who could use it, because otherwise we have a chicken and egg problem. Unless of course there is or there was yet another, older Pattern that Dworkin was attuned to?"

"I believe an older Pattern could be a possibility. I asked your Aunt Flora about Brand when she first brought Clive to Amber, and she broached the possibility that Brand was reenacting an existing cycle. In which case chicken and egg would be very apt."

Well, that’s… certainly something. “So, do you think whatever rooting through Shadow is connected to this Jewel? Or something else?"

"Which Jewel?"

"The force who kidnapped and duplicated Magdalena and has been following us?"

"I'm not certain. This is closer to a subtle intrusion. Like a ghost."

"Okay, thanks,” Taina says, honestly trying not to let sarcasm leak into her words. She’s sure that Mother is trying to be helpful, as little as it seems that way at times. “I just wanted to let you know what was going on, since the rest of the family is undoubtedly already making plans."

If any of this was new to her mother, she doesn’t let it show. But then again, she wouldn’t. “How's Gerard handling three of my least favourite niece?"

"Quietly terrified, last time I saw him."

She grins maliciously. "Take care."

Taina covers the trump, cutting the connection. Well, that was a thing.

She sneaks back into the facility, and finds her bed, mind whirling.

If she dreams, she doesn’t remember them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shen's diary for the session can be found [here](https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/54591046/).


	5. Chapter 5

“So, how should we try and catch our pursuers?” Ariadne asks the next morning. “Given that we seemed to have a Jewel problem last night.”

And, yeah, given their seeming numbers, it seems unlikely that they’ve given up the chase now.

“Drop me off along the way, see who comes along,” Taina volunteers.

The others look between themselves. “Sure,” Caul says. “More room for me in the back.”

Ariadne drops her off in a blasted wasteland, littered by the decaying corpses of crashed spaceships. She doesn’t slow down much, but Taina’s “So, no nice bar to hang out in. Thanks, cousin,” she mutters to herself. Well, at least it’s likely that there’s an intact bottle of finely aged booze in that half hidden case over there.

To her complete lack of surprise, there is indeed a bottle of something in there, though it’s a deep violet hue and she can’t read the label. She twists open the cap and takes a sniff. The smell buzzes on the back of her teeth pleasantly so she takes a swig and huh. It tastes pleasantly purple. Synesthesia isn’t usually her thing, but she can go for it this time and she takes another sip as she lurks in the desolate backdrop, waiting for whoever might be following them.

There’s a sudden crash off to the side and Taina doesn’t precisely jump to her feet, but she does cast a cautious eye in that direction. Not making her movement jerky enough to attract attention, but smoothly, calmly.

One of the ships has just fallen over.

It… could be a coincidence, but here she is waiting and Ariadne did say something about making sure they turned up. It’s certainly worth checking out. Blasted rubble isn’t exactly her preferred terrain for remaining unnoticed — thanks, Ariadne, for that again — but she makes do, bottle still in hand, and she’s fairly sure that she’s unnoticed.

Barring, of course, strange shadow magics or technology, but it isn’t as though she’s surrounded by numerous examples of high tech equipment of unknown capabilities.

Oh wait. The other thing.

As she gets closer to the place where the crash emanated from, there’s additional noises — thumping, sliding, the creaking of metal. And, slowly, one of the spaceships in front of her rises… on four spindly metal legs?

Okay then.

She catches sight of an open hatch, not yet too far from the ground and, abandoning stealth for just the moment, she accelerates to a sprint and jumps, managing to tumble into the opening just before it rises out of easy reach.

She pauses for a second, but no-one seems to be coming to investigate. Undoubtedly they couldn’t hear her over the sounds of the ship, and maybe they didn’t see her headlong dash for the ship, distracted by other things like getting this ship up.

Ah well, there’s no point worrying about this right now.

Even through the debris thrown around by the ship’s rise, she spots a few signs of recent passage heading towards the front of the ship. So, sword out, that’s where she heads… to see three Jewels, all with masculine bodies this time, clustered around the controls. One, in a red shirt, seems to be commanding the others whilst he stands back. Typical manager.

So, he’s the one they probably want to speak to most. Just as well she has a bottle with his name on it. The other Jewels might even thank her.

Probably not though.

She flings the half empty bottle at red-shirt’s head, being careful to throw it gently enough to not crack his skull — shadow dwellers can be so fragile. He staggers at the sudden impacts, but doesn’t go down. Not that she has too much time to worry about it because while one of the other Jewels grabs the controls of the spaceship, the other is charging her with a stanley knife. Not exactly expertly and between her hard parry, leaving his hand gushing blood and an electric discharge from Pentempest, he’s down on the ground and writhing.

Sadly, in the time it takes for her to do this, there’s another Jewel in the room charging at her with a mall katana and yet another being pulled through by red-shirt, who appears to be holding some kind of trump.

Seriously, some people just don’t know when to stay down.

Also, the remaining original Jewel is diving across to console towards a gun he’s presumably just located.

Joy. Deep joy.

First things first. She throws a knife hilt first towards red-shirt, hard enough to put a crimp in most people’s day if still not with her full strength. He staggers — again — and this time goes down, even if he’s twitching a bit too much to be unconscious just yet.

Crap.

On the bright side, he loses concentration on his trump and the guy he was pulling through only partially makes it through before the connection closes. By which she means that the front half of a Jewel collapses to the ground, cleanly sliced in half.

Which… good to know. Taina makes a mental note to avoid going through a trump if the person on the other end is coming under attack.

But then the mall ninja is upon her. Luckily, his sword is just as shabby as it looks, and when she parries it with all of her strength, Pentempest cleanly slices through his weapon and — as an added bonus — discharges electricity through the hilt and into the Jewel, dazing him solidly. She’s still kind of hoping to take almost everyone here alive, so she grabs him before he call fall, using him as a shield so she can hopefully take down gun-Jewel with the minimum of lethality.

Right up until gun-Jewel shoots straight through mall ninja and into her thigh.

Okay, he’s going to die.

She throws mall ninja straight at gun-Jewel, knocking them both to the floor, and stabs gun-Jewel straight through the heart — and also through mall ninja’s gut.

Just in time to see red-shirt start to shimmer and go rainbow coloured. She throws another knife at his head, hilt first, with all her strength behind it… But she’s too late. Most of him disappears, leaving just one foot and the trump card behind him.

Crap. Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap.

And, fuck, she’s really beginning to feel that bullet.

She checks over the mall ninja, the only still living Jewel who came from wherever red-shirt went to. Not living for soon, with those injuries.

Double crap.

She finds some zip ties for both the living Jewels, then shuffles Ariadne’s trump out of her pack and concentrates on it.

“Hi,” she says as Ariadne’s image animates, as she feels the cool touch of Ariadne’s mind on hers. She tries to hide her injury from her cousin, at least whilst she’s next to Shen. She’s not certain she succeeds. “I’ve got some Jewels here, but the one of most interest escaped. I need you to come through to interrogate one before he dies.”

Also, she’s fairly sure that Ariadne’s rated as a surgeon. Given the flare of pain every time she moves her thigh, she’s fairly sure that’ll be useful too.

Ariadne sighs. “Okay, I’ll come through. By the way, Clive is here. He wants to take the opportunity to walk the Pattern we’re going to.”

Which, to be honest, Taina can’t blame him for. It’s got to suck not being allowed that freedom, just because your father was a megalomaniac who tried to rewrite the universe. She can’t help wondering, though, if he knew about Rinaldo, if he’s the person who drew Trumps for him. They didn’t look like his style, but maybe he deliberately mixed it up. If he could, to that great extent.

It isn’t like she knows enough about them to say definitively one way or another. And everyone who does know, has their own agenda.

Still, she can’t help saying, “That might not be the best idea. This Pattern was drawn by Corwin. And, sure, anyone of Oberon’s bloodline might be able to walk the Pattern in Amber, but Dworkin drew that Pattern for him. Given when Corwin likely drew this, I can’t imagine that he’d have been inclined to have let Brand or his blood walk this one.”

“How did you..” Ariadne trails off and rolls her eyes. “Fiona. Of course she didn’t tell me. Okay, I’ll pass that on and come through.” She talks to people out of the frame, relaying what Taina just said and instructions to drive back to where they dropped off Taina. The last thing Taina sees before Ariadne comes through is Shen’s arms, reaching to take the steering wheel.

“Well,” Ariadne says when she’s through. “You certainly made a mess of this one.”

“Please,” mall ninja says in a widening pool of his own blood. “Please don’t let me die.”

Ariadne looks down at him dispassionately. “Why?” she asks.

“I can… I can help you. I have powers! I can block trumps!”

“Sorry,” Ariadne says. “I’m only interested in you for your brain.” She bends down and grips his chin with her hand. His eyes roll back and so do hers.

Taina shudders a bit and goes to check on the other living Jewel — still securely tied up — and then the bus and pieces of Jewel lying around.

Probably dead, but there had already been enough weirdness going around. Best to make sure, just in case. None of them so much as twitched when she kicked them, and they didn’t have a pulse.

Probably good?

With a rattling wheeze mall ninja stops breathing. A moment later, Ariadne opens her eyes. “Huh. Interesting,” she says.

“Oh?”

She shrugs. “When he died, I sensed a chord connecting him to all his brethren. I might be able to do something with that.” She eyes Stanley Knife appraisingly, who pales at the look in her eyes. “If I have another look at it…” she muses.

And, well, it’s not like Taina is exactly opposed to making sure that people who after her don’t get another chance to do it, but…

“Is there anything else we can learn from him first? Did you discover where red-shirt went off to?”

“Oh, yes,” she says dismissively. “That. They seem to have some kind of a base in a shadow very close to where they were holding Magdalena. I can find it again relatively easily.”

“Maybe you can use that thread when we go to attack their base? Flood it with Pattern or something then? And, uh, not to sound too needy, but before you go rooting around in his head, do you think you could remove the bullet from my thigh and sew me up?”

Ariadne looks Taina up and down before spotting the wet patch on Taina’s leathers and frowns. “Why didn’t you say anything before?” She finds a medical kit under the console in the control room and starts rooting through it.

Taina shrugs. “I was fairly sure the Jewel over there would bleed out before you got finished with me and, well, it didn’t seem like the most important thing to lead with.”

Ariadne smirks knowingly as she clears the air bubbles from a syringe of clear liquid. “You mean you didn’t want to let on that you’d been careless enough to get hit in front of Shen.”

Tania groans and shuts her eyes before Ariadne plunges the needle in. “Please don’t tell her.”

“I’m sure I won’t need to,” Ariadne says placidly.

Taina grumbles as Ariadne extracts the bullet and stitches her up. “There,” Ariadne finally says. “Almost as good as new. Now,” she looks towards Stanley-Jewel, “Let’s see what you’ve got hidden away there.”

Taina rolls her eyes and gets to her feet as the final Jewel pales, his eyes glazing as Ariadne takes firm hold of him. It’s always a little uncomfortable watching this. She can remember far too well what it’s like, being helpless in her own mind, unable to move even the smallest muscle, all from the lightest touch of Mother’s hand.

Training.

There’s a reason she skipped out and hit the town whenever she was able. Probably a reason Mother guilt-tripped Uncle Bleys into taking her in hand, as much as he did.

Ariadne releases Stanley-Jewel and brushes herself off. Stanley-Jewel’s eyes are dazed, unfocussed. There’s a bit of drool dribbling from his mouth. She thinks he might have pissed and shit himself.

She wishes she could say that she didn’t know what that felt like too.

When you throw everything you have at an invader in your mind, sometimes the little things slip.

“Huh,” Ariadne says, drawing Tania’s attention away from him.

Taina raises her eyebrows encouragingly.

“This one saw one of the Jewels being empowered. He had his head stuck into some kind of squiggle. Didn’t look like Pattern. Maybe something Chaosy?” She shrugs. “It wasn’t part of my education. I really have to fix that some day. I take it you don’t know anyone down there who might be able to give me an introduction?”

“Except for Merlin?” And that only more by rumour than by fact. “No. Why?”

Ariadne shrugs. “Well, didn’t your mother spend time down there at some point.”

“Why do you think Mother would tell me something she hasn’t told you?”

“Because she is your mother, and Caine is my father.”

Which, point.

“Also, by the way, that foot over there has been Pattern activated. Not our Pattern, but one similar. Maybe Corwin’s pattern, though I haven’t really had a chance to examine it.”

Huh. And worrying. After all, the reason Mother thought the Jewels didn’t have anything to do with the Jewel of Judgement was because they weren’t attuned to Pattern. If some of them were…

Well, best to avoid them getting near the Jewel in the first place.

Taina hears the sound of a car vibrate down the corridor and, checking, Shen, Caul and Clive had indeed arrived.

“Up here,” she calls.

As Shen pulls herself up into the spaceship, Taina can’t help feeling self-conscious about her injury. It isn’t as though it’s serious, but it’s just…

She was being cocky and overconfident and, sure, Shen wouldn’t have been hurt through her armour, but Shen wouldn’t have been hit at all.

“Hi,” she says. “Well, we found one of their bases.” She fills the others in on what Ariadne discovered, walking them towards the command centre. “I was thinking that we could attack it, if you’d be up for that Shen.”

“I’d prefer not to leave enemies at our back,” she says soberly. She hasn’t said anything about Taina’s injury, and Taina can’t help feeling a rush of gratitude for that. She’s sure that Shen would be nice about it, but…

But she doesn’t think she could bear any concern from her, not at the moment.

“Caul, would you be up for continuing to drive to the other pattern, maybe take Clive with you? That way we shouldn’t be delayed too long, given there’s still a king to rescue and a Jewel to liberate. Though not one of these Jewels,” she says, kicking a body.

“Sure,” Caul drawls. “At least I’ve have a better class of company riding shotgun with me. Better music too.”

Shen glares at him, but thankfully doesn’t take a step towards him, much to the comfort of Tains’s stomach.

“Actually,” Ariadne interjects. “Before you go, Clive, could you have a look at this?” She hands him the trump that red-shirt dropped.

Clive examines the card, turning it this way and that. It has the same symbol both sides, the smiley face that is the hallmark of the Jewels. “It’s not a card to a place or even a single person,” he says after a minute. “Rather it seems to connect to many people, a sort of hive mind of these Jewels if I had to guess.” He hands the trump back.

Ariadne views him with a hint of the same speculation that she previously aimed at the Jewels. “Would you be willing to attack them through this trump when we attack them? Every little might help.”

“Um, yes, maybe, I guess I could,” he stammers. “I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks,” she says and Clive grabs Caul and rapidly hurries away, presumably before anything more can be asked of him.

“So,” Ariadne says. “I’ll get to a shadow that’s close to them, then Trump the rest of you through.” She intensifies her concentration and abruptly disappears.

So, apparently that’s a thing if one studies under Mother and actually listens. For a moment, Taina is vaguely regretful that she didn’t, but then…

Eh, life’s too short. Besides, she knows exactly how much aptitude she has for that kind of thing, and it really isn’t much.

She gets Ariadne’s trump out and concentrates. Ariadne answers and holds out her hand impatiently. Taina looks over at Shen. “Ready?”

Shen sighs heavily and takes off her helmet, holding it in her arm. There’s something almost unguarded, almost raw about her in that moment, something that Taina’s fingers almost itch to capture in charcoal and paper.

But not in front of Shen and definitely not now. She takes hold of Shen’s hand, almost surprised to touch the smooth metal of her gloves, rather than skin calloused from sword work. As she passes Shen through to Ariadne, a fleeting thought crosses her mind: would the callouses beneath the glove match her own? Once Shen is through, it’s Stanley-Jewel’s turn and then, finally, Taina herself goes through.

It’s a snowy mountainside, much like the one they rescued the Magdalenas from yesterday. Shen is there, standing guard over the prisoner, helmet already back in place. Ariadne walks ahead of them, twisting shadow subtly until she stops. “Okay, we’re almost there.” She eyes the prisoner again, then pulls out a trump of Clive and concentrates. She has a brief, one-sided conversation with him before turning in Taina and Shen’s direction. “He’s suggesting that we ask Fiona to use the trump.”

Taina feels something uncomfortable twist in her stomach. She doesn’t like asking her mother for favours, not unless she has something of equal or greater value to offer in return, and this really doesn’t feel like that. Mother always asks for things in return, often things Taina isn’t comfortable giving.

“She’s your mentor,” she says instead. “Maybe you should ask her.”

Ariadne looks at her for a moment, before shrugging and saying, “Sure.” She takes Mother’s trump out and concentrates on it. Another one-sided conversation ensues, one which Taina is even less interested in listening to, like if she doesn’t hear anything, it can’t affect her.

It doesn’t work like that, of course, but she can hope. She can pretend.

She catches Shen’s eyes and gives her a smile. Shen give her a slightly confused look back and Taina shrugs. It’s not so bad, being here, watching a mistress of battle at her work.

Even better if she doesn’t mention the embarrassing incident with the bullet. Ugh.

“Okay,” Ariadne says eventually. “She’s agreed to distract them for a couple of minutes when we give the word.”

Taina banishes the last of her unease and smiles. “Action time then, I guess.”


	6. Chapter 6

Raiding the local shadows for gear isn’t exactly a challenge. What might be a fully stocked depot in one world is abandoned in the shadow over. And it isn’t as though the heaviest armour she can find locally, ceramic plates and all, is exactly going to slow her down. And at least she’s had some practice with weapons like what the locals use.

That was a fun weekend, cutting loose with various automatic weaponry from a hang glider. Though the kickback from the grenade launcher had made things interesting. She had scored well on the course she’d designed too.

“Ready?” she asks Shen as she checks over her bounty for a final time.

Shen tersely nods back.

“Go,” she tells Ariadne, who promptly slits Stanley-Jewel’s throats and blood starts spurting in jagged bursts. Not the quickest way to kill someone, but apparently Ariadne doesn’t want his death to be instant, for whatever witchery she’s planning.

Not that Taina has any moral qualms about this. Killing people is a messy business and it’s still not a bad way to die as these things go.

She concentrates on Fiona’s trump. “It’s go time,” she says as soon as the connection is formed.

Blessedly Mother just says, “Thank you, dear.”

Taina cuts the connection and, walking, crunching through the snow, mentally adds the chalet just downslope of her and Shen.

“This is your morning wake up call!” she yells and opens up with her automatic grenade launcher, loaded with concussion rounds.

Even before the first grenade explodes, there’s already screaming coming from the building, and as she fires short bursts of grenades in through the windows, Jewels start staggering out. Some are clutching at their heads, but some are smoking, even bursting into flame as they do so.

Shen advances down the slope, automatic grenade launcher in hand, her armour protecting her from any ill effects of the grenades Taina launches, and executes all the Jewels outside before moving in. In the quiet times between grenade salvos, she can hear the sound of gunfire from within. Another twenty seconds and Taina slings the grenade launcher over one shoulder and moves in after her.

Shen, as ever, does immaculate work, whether it’s with a sword or a gun. Going in the opposite end of the chalet, Taina manages to catch a few outliers, but in general there are just a lot of dead bodies, neat holes drilled in each of their bemasked heads. She finds Shen cutting all the clothing off redshirt’s hoarsely screaming body, blood pooled around his body where he’s had all his tendons precisely severed.

“Site’s secured,” Taina says. A flurry of snow kicks up into the air, followed shortly by the faint echoing sound of a shot. “Site mostly secure,” she amends There’s another shot and she tracks it back to a rifle resting on the window ledge of one of the other Jewel strongholds, a few miles away on another slope.

Shen unslings the rifle she’d grabbed earlier and aims it, cooly unconcerned about the incoming fire. Taina probably doesn’t have much to be worried about — the shooters haven’t even managed to find the range of the chalet yet, let alone anything as small as a human being. Still she grabs redshirt’s body anyway, and sprints out of the building, subtracting it as she leaves it and adding Ariadne and Clive.

“Here,” she says, dumping redshirt none too gently on the ground in front of her. “A present for you. Think you’ll be fine looking after him?”

Ariadne looks cooly down as redshirt writhes naked on the ground, none of his limbs obeying him, before stilling and staring hatefully up at them. “I should be fine,” she decides “Oh, by the way, there are two more people of interest in the building over there.” She points in the direction of the building that had opened fire on them.

“Ah,” Taina says a little awkwardly. “I hope they’re still there?” Not that she knows what a daughter of Beatrice might do exactly, but she suspects it tends to the rather final.

“They are,” Ariadne says definitively, which is… well, good. If still a little spooky, if Taina lets herself wonder what else Ariadne might be aware of. What her mother might be well aware of, for that matter.

Ugh. She’s never having sex in Amber again, nor when she’s sharing a shadow with either of them. Or in a shadow **near** either of them if she can help it.

“One’s a woman wearing black, carrying a shotgun,” Ariadne carries on, apparently unaware of where Taina’s mind had just darted off to. “The other is… I think it looks like a male and female Jewel smushed together. I’m fairly sure you’ll recognise them when you see them.”

Huh. Well, that’s a thing. Taina vaguely wonders how far through shadows she’d have to wonder before she founda version of her like that. Not that she would, of course, but she can’t help but imagine it might take a little while.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll go and get Shen before she… before.”

“That would be appreciated,” Ariadne says dryly. “More subjects would definitely be appreciated.”

When Taina returns to Shen, the gunfire has unsurprisingly stopped. “Come on,” Taina says. “More people to grab.”

Shen nods seriously. “Descriptions?” she asks and Taina fills her in. “Lead on.”

There’s no discernible point in staying in this shadow for the approach to the other building, so Taina shifts them over to another one with a snowmobile parked outside the chalet, keys still in the ignition. She’s at east 90% sure it isn’t the same one she stole the snowmobile from a few days ago, though she can’t help but wonder what the inhabitants will think if it is. The Mystery of the Disappeared Snowmobiles, perhaps. A child detective following the tracks until… they just disappear.

For that matter, she wonders what the inhabitants of the shadow they’re causing problems in think of all this. Massacres and gunfire and lots of near identical bodies. She’s honestly a little surprised that the local equivalents to the guard haven’t appeared yet, to try and bring the situation under control. But maybe the shadow was chosen so that they wouldn’t interfere if something like this kicked off — either by Madalena as a place she could blow off steam in whatever way she wished, or modified by Jewels later, so they wouldn’t have to worry about interference.

Or they could simply have been paid off.

Mundane, but almost as effective.

They’re just about at the chalet when Taina shifts them back and the fight is on. A salvo of grenades to soften things up, then Taina and Shen penetrate their defences hard, together. It’s… well, Taina still feels a little like a schoolgirl thinking like this, but she can’t help trying to show off a little, take down targets that little bit quicker. Sure there were the drills last night, but this is **real**. Kind of.

A blast from the Jewel in black slows Taina down, a little, causing her to roll under it whilst Shen takes the opportunity to kneecap her. Whilst Shen moves in to do her comprehensive de-tendoning, Taina makes the most of the spare moments to clear the rest of the room then move on a little until a hulking shape and what sounds like a man and a woman roaring at once stops her.

Huh. This must be the other entity Ariadne’s interested in.

The physiology of the person standing in front of her is… weird. There’s two faces sticking out of the head in front of her, the lines of two throats decorating a thick neck that looks like it’s almost the size of Taina’s waist. They have other redundancies too, Taina thinks as she snaps out a hard kick to one kneecap… only for the person to continue using the limb on another joint hidden somewhere further within their flesh. Jolts from the flat of Pentempest’s blade don’t seem to do much either, apart from piss it off.

Taina senses rather than sees Shen join her, too much of her attention more focussed on the opponent in front of her, avoiding being hit by their club-like limbs. Could they be the progenitor of the Jewels, a conjoined creature of power that sends forth reflections of each of their component selves? She dodges as they charge her, taking the opportunity to sever more muscles in their right hand thigh.

If there’s a saving grace, it’s this — this Jewel maybe strong it may be tough, but it’s also slow, at least by the measure of a scion of the royal family. She thinks that even **Ariadne** might have quicker reflexes in a fight than they do, and she’s always declared that fighting, and practising at fighting, is beneath her — much like Taina — and tends to freeze when Taina goes to pick her up, rather do anything useful. The fight turns into something of a performance as the Jewel attacks first one of them, then the other as Shen and Taina take it in turns to attack whilst they’re distracted, an ode to Behemoth played by Shen and Taina.

It’s… This is definitely something Taina s going to start painting the next time she has a spare moment. It’s something she wants to remember.

Eventually — it’s not not that long, but by the standards of the other Jewels they’ve fought it’s like forever — the Jewel topples and Shen moves in for the severing. Taina clears the rest of the chalet, then squints at the third Jewel stronghold.

They definitely seem to be preparing for a siege.

She gets her Trump of Ariadne out. “There isn’t anyone or anything of interest in the third place, is there?”

Ariadne concentrates for a moment and the contact crackles and almost fades for a moment before firming up again. “No.”

“Oh, good. See you in a moment — we have two gifts for you.”

Taina retrieves the rocket launchers she got earlier from the snowmobile as Shen joins her.”Feel like clearing matters up at Stronghold C?” Taina asks.

Shen pauses for a moment then nods. Taina hands her one of the launchers and together, in synchronicity they fire trails of smoke that end in explosions and the third chalet crashes majestically into itself.

Taina picks up Behemoth, leaving Shen to carry Shotgun Jewel and they head back to Ariadne and Clive. “So, what do we want to do with them?” she asks bluntly. “I mean, I imagine we want to question them but we know at least some Jewels can travel through Shadow and we have no idea of what reinforcements they can call upon.”

“Oh,” Clive says, jumping up and down a little excitedly in his leather trench coat. “I have a shadow we could take them to.”

“Are you sure? We know these people have a tendency to follow people once they encounter them,” Worse than the smell of one of Uncle Julian’s bogs after falling ‘accidentally’ into them whilst trespassing in Arden without permission.

Clive shrugs. “I have defences.”

Which, well, he probably has a better idea than Taina does. And if he’s fine with the risk… “Sounds good,” she says.

He pulls out one of his elaborately designed Trumps — a little overproduced in Taina’s opinion — and concentrates on it. And then they’re in foyer of a garishly glass and chrome and neon building. It’s a multilevel affair, with three levels of balconies overlooking them, people in suits tasing them by without sparing them a second glance and guards with what looked like cybernetic implants keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Clive says, gesturing around.

It’s very him, Taina has to admit.

At Ariadne’s prodding, he leads them to what he terms as ‘an information enhancement centre’. It’s a brightly lit interrogation suite, with separate soundproofed rooms, each with its own table with restraints for their guests, and a central area they can keep an eye all of them at once.. After administering a cocktail of drugs to redshirt, Ariadne gets to work, touching his head and concentrating.

Taina gets out her sketchpad and pencil and starts working, trying to commit as many of the details of ode to paper as she can whilst she remembers. It’s… well, it’s a lot easier since Shen and Behemoth are right there, even if they’re not in the same poses they had been. Shen, standing… well,as much to ease as she ever is, like she’s still expecting something dreadful to happen at any moment, but it’s not actually happening yet, keeping an impassive watch on the cells that Ariadne isn’t in, Behemoth slack faced, slack muscled, still bleeding a little from the injuries they gave them earlier

But it’s enough, and slowly the rough shapes of her first draft come into focus, and she starts to think about which medium, the properties of which of her art shadows might be able to capture this the best. Sure, she could just do this in paints that could be appreciated pretty much anywhere, in Amber say, but… Well, there’s a part of her that wants to make this more special, like in Dharie where she can paint a different image for each different angle, or Xhalia, where the pigments can remember thoughts and emotions pressed into them using the right rituals.

A movement out of the corner of her eye catches her attention — Ariadne steps away from the drooling redshirt and stretches, cracking joints as she does so. She exits the cell into the common area.

“He’s not a Jewel. His name is Xander and he’s one of the family. I think he might be my half brother,” she says in a tone of half bemusement, half irritation. “It’s a little hard to tell. His memories are a little… fanciful on the subject.” At least she doesn’t seem distressed at what they’ve done to her brother. Which is good, Taina guesses, if a little… How would she have felt if this Xander had turned out to be her half brother? She… honestly doesn’t know.

It does seem to be the season for previously unknown cousins to be springing out of the woodwork though.

“He looks like a Jewel because he seems to have some kind of shape changing ability. He can go to sleep and wake up looking like someone else. He was at father’s funeral,” she says with a little asperity. “Might have at least said hello then. Instead of then heading off and helping with the whole Magdalena thing. Which by the way was his idea in the first place. Apparently he’s another one with a grudge against the rest of the family.”

Maybe Xander and Rinaldo should start a club. Certainly seems like they have enough in common. Though, given the rest of the family that’s certainly no guarantee they’d actually get on in the slightest.

“Someone who looks like Dworkin found him and took him to the Rebman pattern to walk.”

Wow. A-plus class decisions there. Just what the family needs - their ex-court sorcerer going off and doing this kind of thing without telling anyone.

“He then skulked around until he spotted the Jewels who started appearing on Magdalena’s ski resort world a few years back. He took their shape and introduced himself as the Jewel of Amber and pointed them at Magdalena. He also came up with the idea of finding shadows of Magdalena and pumping them full of her blood, so they had some of her power or something? It seems to have worked, for a while at least.”

Which, okay, is all sorts of worrying if transfusions are all it takes to do that. There’s no guarantee that normal shadow folk couldn’t replicate that effect.

Huh. What if vampires…? No, probably best not to find that one out.

Still, good news for Gerard, who had looked a little ill at the prospect of suddenly having triplets.

“Does he know **why** the Jewels started turning up?” Taina can’t help ask.

“If he does, he managed to keep it from me,” Ariadne says in a tone of voice that firmly stated that she does not believe that’s at all likely.

Which, well. Taina has absolutely no grounds for comparison here.

“Anything else?” Taina asks.

“No, that’s pretty much it,” Ariadne says. “I’m going to go poke a Jewel, see if they have anything more to tell us.” She walks off towards the cell holding shotgun Jewel.

“So,” Taina turning to Shen who’s been quiet throughout this. “I kind of feel like I have to ask — is this the new normal? Have any other new cousins popped up, swearing vengeance on the rest of the family since I’ve been gone?”

Shen stills further, if that’s possible. “Not that Mother has informed me.”

“So, who have you been training to fight? Or has it just been generalities, being taught to fight as many different foes as Beatrice can come up with? Theory wars, basically.”

“I have not been fighting in theory,” Shen says in a tone of voice which discourages further conversational gambits.

Taina sits back and sighs. It’s… she just doesn’t know how to read Shen. She’s stayed on dozen of worlds since leaving Amber over a decade ago — most for days or weeks, though some years — and got on with pretty much everyone she wanted to get on with, but family…

Family’s always different.

She’s started sketching on a different sheet of paper by the time Ariadne emerges from shotgun Jewels cell, though that takes a lot less time than Xander’s interrogation. “She was found and recruited by another Jewel shadow,” Ariadne says. “And she’s recruited more in turn. If she knows how the whole thing started, it’s lost in her madness. She did see that thing,” she points at Behemoth, “being created, so I don’t think there’s much point going into their brain.”

Possibly just as well.

“Nothing special. Just a male and female Jewel energised at once.“

Okay, that’s a little disappointing.

”I did manage to get a good image of how they’re empowering Jewels with energy though, and I’ve located it back on Magdalena’s shadow.” She looks at Clive, who has been on the edge of his seat about these revelations. “Do you mind if we leave these people here?”

“No, not at all. Don’t worry, I can keep them safe.”

“Including against Trump? Someone did make trumps of them, and we don’t know who that is yet.”

Clive looks a little offended. “Excuse me. I am the master of Trump.”

“There seems to be a few of those around at the moment,” Shen says dryly. Leaving out, of course, that the source of both Rinaldo’s trumps and Jewels’ could be Clive himself. After all, they only have Rinaldo’s and Clive’s words that they don’t know each other and, well, who is ore rely to have contact with Chaos than Brand’s son, especially if Amber hasn’t let him walk the Pattern?

Still, Ariadne doesn’t seem to have any problems with that as she says, “Sure. Let’s do that then.” Whether it’s because she thinks that she’s got all she can from them or she trusts Clive or just that she wants to get as far away from her newly found half-brother as possible.

Ariadne concentrates for a few minutes before disappearing. Taina then trumps her and hands Shen off before being pulled through herself. They’re back at one of the chalets. Ariadne leads them to a free standing noticeboard-thing which has… something on it. A map of the ski resort? Whatever it is, Taina can’t actually focus on it at all. Just trying gives her a headache and she quickly turns so she can’t see it at all.

“That… is… fascinating,” Ariadne breathes before looking away herself.

“You don’t have time to study it now,” Shen says, practical as ever, seemingly unaffected by whatever this is, whether by virtue of metaphysical armour to go along with her physical armour, or sheer strength of will, Taina can’t say.

“No, probably not,” Ariadne says, sounding regretful.

“But we can’t just leave it here.” It’s part of a plot, whether against Magdalena in specific or the royal family in general, it’s hard to say, Weapons testing at the very least, it feels like. Ariadne quickly finds a tarpaulin to throw over it so Taina can look at it, at least.

“Shall we take it away and store it somewhere a little safer?” Taina suggests. “At least until we’ve rescued the king and recovered the jewel of judgement.”

“Sounds good,” Ariadne says.

Moving it is a little tricky. Not physically — Shen simply chops the supports down with a single blow of her sword. But Ariadne has worries that moving it using Pattern might potentially react badly with the power of the symbol. And Trump… well, the Jewel’s have the power to disrupt trumps, so it doesn’t seem out of the question that this symbol might as well. And given they know what happens to inconveniently disrupted Trumps…

“Chopping this symbol in half would be bad,” Ariadne says bluntly.

In the end, they settle for Ariadne moving it carefully via Pattern, with Taina trumping her, ready to pull her through if it looks like something is going wrong.

But it doesn’t and soon the symbol is locked securely in the vault of another ring world, defences ready to blast anyone who isn’t them and several nasty metaphysical traps waiting for anyone who comes looking at it. Well, at least according to Ariadne.

Finally, finally they’re ready to get back to their other mission. Ariadne gets out her trump of Caul and concentrates on it.

**Author's Note:**

> Shen's latest diary is [here](https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/54999433/)


End file.
